Health

Every night, I—like millions of others—put on a noise machine to help me sleep. Mine offers several types of noise: white, pink, green, and brown. I’ve noticed something strange, though. After about 30 minutes of the noise pumping into my head, I start to hear things. Sometimes it’s music, like a full orchestral score. Other times it’s people having a conversation just out of the range where I’d hear actual words. Occasionally, it sounds like my husband playing a video game.So I do what most people would do when a random…

A 58-year-old man with a rare medical condition sees faces normally on screens and paper, but in person, they take on a demonic quality. The patient has a unique case of prosopometamorphopsia (PMO), a condition that causes peoples’ faces to appear distorted, reptilian, or otherwise inhuman.The Fujifilm X100VI is the Most Fun I’ve Had With a Camera in YearsA new study published in The Lancet describes the case, which is unique in that, to the man, the faces only appear demonic when the individuals are physically present.…

The cost of Wegovy will soon be covered by Medicare, according to an announcement from the federal health insurance program for seniors on Thursday. And while that’s great news for people over 65 who want access to a medication that’s drawn so much attention for its ability to help with weight loss, there’s just one catch. Medicare will only pay if patients have potentially serious heart problems.The Fujifilm X100VI is the Most Fun I’ve Had With a Camera in YearsWegovy is the brand name of Novo Nordisk’s anti-obesity…

Boxes of Wegovy made by Novo Nordisk are seen at a pharmacy in London, Britain March 8, 2024. Hollie Adams | ReutersMedicare can start covering certain weight loss drugs for the first time – as long as they are approved for an added health benefit, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Thursday.That opens up the door for broader coverage of some highly popular weight loss medications such as Novo Nordisk's Wegovy, which is now approved in the U.S. for heart health. Those treatments have skyrocketed in demand…

Slayman received his first kidney transplant in 2018 from a human donor. The donor kidney initially functioned well, but Slayman started to go into kidney failure after years of living with diabetes. Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney disease, which can eventually result in kidney failure.He had no choice but to go on dialysis, a treatment that removes excess fluid and waste from a person’s blood. But the dialysis caused complications—his blood vessels were clotting and failing. Slayman wound up in the hospital…

Wyatt Flores can pinpoint the exact moment he says the party ended in country music. After a decade-plus of tailgating, beer-drinking songs clogging up playlists, the pandemic struck and forced artists and fans alike indoors with their thoughts. And shit got real, fast. “They got trapped inside of wherever they were and they had a lot of time to sit down and think, and that flustered up their minds,” Flores says. “People felt emotions that they hadn’t felt before.” Emotional songwriting just happened to be…

At the start of the 2010s, rates of teenage mental illness took a sharp upward turn, and they have been rising ever since. Among US college students, diagnoses of depression and anxiety more than doubled between 2010 and 2018. More worrying still, in the decade to 2020 the number of emergency room visits for self-harm rose by 188% among teenage girls in the US and 48% among boys. The suicide rate for younger adolescents also increased, by 167% among girls and 91% among boys. A similar trend has been observed in the UK and…

Littleton recently passed a law banning the retail sale of cats and dogs, joining fifteen other Colorado cities in a bid to decrease commercial breeding operations, according to the Best Friends group. The ordinance, which passed the Littleton City Council with a unanimous vote on March 5, was first introduced in January and follows a slew of similar attempts to increase animal welfare in Colorado after the state’s “puppy mill” bill, or Humane Pet Act, failed to pass in 2020. The bill would have established standards for…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Medical Association sent out separate but similar pleas on Monday for unvaccinated Americans to get vaccinated against the extremely contagious measles virus as vaccination rates have slipped, cases are rising globally and nationally, and the spring-break travel period is beginning.In the first 12 weeks of 2024, US measles cases have already matched and likely exceeded the case total for all of 2023. According to the CDC, there were 58 measles cases reported…

The company behind a phone app for determining a food’s nutritional value has amassed $32 million in debt and still owes back pay to two dozen ex-employees as it shuts down. Opsis Health, of Highlands Ranch, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy March 15, less than one year after it launched Plateful, the company’s signature phone app. Chapter 7 requires a company to liquidate its assets and distribute them among those it owes money to. Plateful allows users to scan 1 million foods, then assigns those foods both a nutritional…